Ashitech Asphalt Plants: Efficient Solutions for Road Construction

“Ashitech offers asphalt batch mix plants (80-240 tph) for India's road construction projects and focuses on efficiency, fuel savings, and cold weather operations.”

Vatsal Patel - Director, Ashitech Equipments

Gujarat-based manufacturer Ashitech produces asphalt batch mix plants in capacities ranging from 80-100-120-160-180-200-240 tph. Other products of the company are road bitumen sprayers, drum mix plants, and decanters – all of which are produced at its Dediyasan facility in Mehsana, Gujarat.

We are seeing demand for 120 tph plants due to the increasing road construction projects across India requiring asphalt volumes of 3000-4000 ton per day. We are also seeing contractors going for two units of 120 tph plants instead of a single unit of 250 tph such that each unit can be deployed at both ends of the stretch so that they can feed the mix on both ends of the road construction project underway. The other advantage of having two 120 tph units is that alternate plants can be relied upon for producing the mix in case of failure in either one of the installed plants. Contractors are also factoring in the faster lead times and reduced transportation costs.

A single 240 tph unit comes with a higher initial cost; post its installation, the cost of moving it to other sites through tipper trucks and returning the empty trucks to the plants, add to the cost. Contractors have figured out that working with two plants of lower capacity is more economical.

Though we do envisage demand for the larger 200 and 240 tph plants as well, there will be some physical restrictions in their placement on road projects for laying the asphalt. Plus, roads that are undergoing expansions or repairs will mean slowing down or diverting the traffic to make way for the plants. These are some of the barriers in applying the higher capacity plants and also the reason why we see two or three laning of roads.

Ashitech is currently expanding its market reach, especially in regions which it has not entered till date. It has recently appointed dealers in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and in the Northeast, and is now appointing dealers in Kerala and Odisha. Besides sales, the dealers will be responsible for timely deliveries, and for providing technical support and maintenance.

To improve the efficiency of its standard stationery plants in view of the emerging opportunities in road rehabilitation, Ashitech is strengthening its research for development of upgraded asphalt batch mix plants, including mobile plants, for which it is also taking feedback from its customers.

Our plan is to integrate advanced technologies in our plants to improve their output and thereby offset their initial high costs, which are going up due to the rising cost of raw materials and components. To further reduce the cost of operations for our customers, we will make our plants more fuel efficient by almost 15% than other competing brands. This will require a more advanced drum design and burners that can maintain the right levels of air to fuel ratio for proper heating of the aggregates. In fact, we have redesigned the burners and will make them in-house. They will be able to burn any kind of fuel available at project sites.

Our plants will be more energy efficient, and heat insulated with glass wool insulation on the drums and bins. This will ensure appropriate mixing of the aggregates and bitumen when working in cold regions. We have already improved the mixing design of our plants so that they can process various aggregates, particularly the river based, abrasive aggregates, mixed with bitumen. Our plants are now adaptable enough to work on the Northern Himalayan terrain.

For the drum mix plants, we will bring new metallurgy and will also improve the drum flight pattern. Since we want our plants to yield 10-12% more productivity than other competing brands, we are sourcing some components from manufacturers of global repute.